Ply and Burl

Finally, the in-betweens are over! We left Ithaca a last Tuesday and have been in Ann Arbor for one week as of today. Recycling night was Sunday, so were finally able to clear the boxes and newspapers out of the living room. I took a load to Salvation Army yesterday, and have been posting the things on Craigslist that I should have sold before the move rather than after. The house is slowly getting organized and is starting to feel like home.

Our new place is essentially a cottage in the city, and is just a hair less funky than I can take, which is perfect. It’s at the back of another lot, meaning our front door opens onto one street, and our back door opens onto the driveway of a house on another. We have a perimeter of about three feet of yard on two sides of the house, one of which is shady, and one of which is overgrown with burdock. Where our front yard would be, there is poured cement.

As you can imagine, this is putting an interesting twist on my gardening. I’ve arrived in A2 too late to start a veggie plot at a community garden site. However, in anticipation of needing to scratch my gardening itch, I planted some basil, peppers, and geraniums in pots early in the summer, which I then transported out here during the move. Since arriving, we’ve picked up a few herbs and put those in pots, and I’ve also planted some Scarlet Runner Beans in hopes that they’ll bolt up and obscure the not-so-classy posts for the porch that overhangs our front door. It’s no gardener’s paradise, but it’s something!

Knitting has been, well, neglected. There, I admit it. That’s part of the reason I haven’t blogged in so long! I had no time for it, with the work and the travel and the move and all the heart-wrenching goodbye dates before we left. I was working through the spring on the Airy Cardigan, and made a lot of progress. All that remains to finish it is a single sleeve, but I’m finding the kid mohair so irritating to knit that I can barely look at the thing. Not to mention that it fits like a mumu… not my sartorial favorite.

Weirdly, a few days ago, as I was unpacking, I picked up a crochet hook. I ran across my copy of Stitch and Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker, which a friend gave me for my birthday last year. Now, let me not mince words: I hate crocheting! I hate how it looks, I am a klutz with the hook, and it just generally bugs me.

But guess what? I’m actually enjoying it! Gah — Internet, don’t repeat that to anyone. I can’t believe I actually let it out of my mouth. But there it is, the truth laid bare, probably destined to alienate all my knitter friends. Oh well, try to still love me, OK? I can’t help that I’m open-minded, and crocheting just walked right in the door.

My house right now is littered with little purple crochet bits — my practice swatches. I’ve learned single crochet, double crochet, triple crochet, the shell stitch, and the fishnet stitch. My mind is full of the tackiest ideas, too: I’ll crochet plant hangers for the house! I’ll make a purse out of the shell stitch! I’ll crochet the cowboy hat pattern from the book!

Look, knitters, I know this is a dangerous path I’m going down. But hear me out, ’cause I’m one of you: a knitter through and through. At the same time, I’m thinking that there are several instances of crochet that aren’t tacky! Think beautiful crocheted lace our foremothers made from fine thread. Or the afghans that keep us warm in the winter! My grandmother and her mother both crocheted afghans for all their kids and grandkids. Mine, which I got to pick out the yarn for, is one of my most treasured possessions. My grandma passed away 11 years ago, and I still love and guard that blanket like a mama bear guards her cubs. It’s got my gram’s touch in every stitch, and her hands, which look like my hands, held every thread in it. It revives her in my mind, and brings her closer to me. (That could make a good advertisement no? “Crochet: It brings people back from the dead!”)

So this crochet phase? I think it’s kind of sweet, don’t you? I know it’s illogical, sentimental, and entirely misguided, but still, don’t deny it: crochet just melted a little bit of your sappy heart.

p.s. As a cure for my homesickness (and wet feet in the rain) I bought these new stylin’ shoes!

p.p.s. Also, even better news: the boy and I got engaged on July 2!

It’s been a garden exploring summer, and now that I’m feeling the itch to knit again, I figure it’s time to post the gardening photo sets before I’ve all but forgotten about leaves in favor of fiber.

In July we visited Sonnenburg Gardens in Canandaigua, NY. They are the Victorian-era gardens of the wife of the founder of what is now Citibank. From what I read, she and her troupe of landscapers spanned both geography and fashion in building her gardens, which include a formal Italian garden, a classic perennial garden, a beautiful Japanese garden, and a rose garden, among others.

It’s a fascinating place, almost less for the gardens than for the effect that slow decline and lack of funding has had on them. The Sonnenbergs’ country mansion is on the property as well, and is a fascinating, if not a bit worn-out, time capsule.

Click here or on the photos above to see the photo set!

My town is FULL of incredible gardeners, especially downtown, where they pack small spaces with beautifully orchestrated splashes of color and variations in topography. So books be damned, I’ve decided to learn from observation. Check out a my photoset from my first Downtown Flower Walk by clicking on the shots below. If you can ID any of the flowers in the set, please do.

As a side note, on the walk we encountered the Volvo Kitty, who graced us with a rub of his enormous tail. So though he is NOT a flower, he’s included too.

Well, I’m back from Italy! Super glad to be home, but a little sad to have ever left gorgeous southern Tuscany. But no mind — I’ve got pictures! First slideshow for you peruse — Tuscan Plants and Gardens.

Usually it’s so wet and dreary here in upstate New York that we’re begging, pleading, on our knees imploring the gods to send us more sun. But this spring has been so warm, dry and sunny that our spring flowers are growing a little less robustly than usual. It’s been a little sad for me, seeing that I planted a boatload of new perennials last year and this is when they take off. So I was thrilled to see the rain coming down the last few days, and the burst of growth that resulted. A funny upshot was my obsession with raindrops, leading to more than a few garden photos like the following:

OK, so now that there’s been rain, let’s get that sun back before I up and move to Arizona!

I put a little bit of the backyard garden on my desk to remind me of how beautiful the trees and plants outside are this time of year.

Wahoo! My Hourglass Sweater is finally finished!

Sadly, the neck does feel like it’s going to stretch and fall off my shoulders. I can’t complain — I was warned by many a knitter to knit a few extra rows to make the neck smaller, but when I tried it on, it just didn’t feel as wide as it did once I’d finished. Any advice for how to keep the neck a smaller size without frogging and adding rows? I wove a thread through it, but I’m not sure how much that’ll help.

And, for kicks, more spring flowers!

Remember these gourds from the end of the last garden season?

Well, here they are at the beginning of the next growing season:

Amazing! The ones that are covered in mold and look like they’d melt into a torrent of gourd slime if you tried to pick them up — they’re actually completely hollow and hard! The mold is dry, and sitting on top of the dried-out skin. The gourds that are a nice mottled tan are what the moldy ones will look like after a soak in the sink and gently scrub with copper wool.

I’m thoroughly impressed at their transformation. These gourds spent the winter sitting on my enclosed back porch, going through freezes and thaws, and giant changes in temperature and humidity. Still, they managed to dry out instead of rot, and turn into the real McCoy.

If you’re intersted in growing and drying gourds yourself, check out this pdf from Johnnie’s on how to grow and dry gourds.

The six inches of snow melted in a warm rain storm over the weekend and look what I found bursting through underneath:

Chicken and Hen

A perennial whose name I’ve forgotten

My first crocus and some weeds that have already flowered!

We just bought our house last summer so everything coming up in the garden is a surprise!

They say time goes by faster when you get older (a ripe 30), and there’s nothing like the garden and the yarn store to prove it. A quick jaunt to the garden to pick a few peas always extends to a little pulling. a little pruning, a little thinning, a little weeding, and suddenly three hours have gone by! This weekend’s trip to the yarn store was a great case in point: Got to chatting with Hickory, starting with yarn and ending with “naturist” camps, and my five minute trip to get some Addis turned magically and imperceptibly turned into an hour before I even looked up at my watch. Hey Einstein, more proof for the theory of relativity!